Pre K / Kinder Learning Game: Car Junkyard

Alyssa Talamo • April 11, 2023

Welcome to "The Junkyard"

Quick story about the inspiration for this activity. Back in my days at Lindamood-Bell Learning Centers, one of the parents was a homeschool teacher, and she took our recommendation to practice sight words daily very seriously. She sent us a picture of her daughter "fishing" for sight words with a magnet and I thought it was so creative and adorable!

Separately, I wound up buying these magnets for my fridge and randomly thought "heh, these kinda remind me of those big junkyard magnets" and voila! The inspiration for this car-themed version of my client's "fishing" game was born. I'll admit, it does take a bit of parent prep time, but hopefully the learner engagement speaks for itself and makes the time worth investing. If you have a multi-child family, this could be a great bonding activity for older siblings to help with the prep steps and teach the younger ones.  

Endless Ways to Play! 

The concept for the game is quite simple: place a bunch of paper-clipped cars on the floor or table, and explain the rules of play depending on the desired learning target. The child must then use the magnet to grab and move the correct cars. We love how the game can be adapted in numerous ways -- we've categorized our suggestions as Sorting, Matching, Ordering and Searching. The first three are great independent activities, while the last is perfect for parent-facilitated (or sibling-facilitated!) learning.

Any of these games can easily be modified to other themes for kiddos who aren't particularly interested in cars, but would enjoy the play and benefit from the learning goals. Some fun shapes to try could be fish, butterflies or other bugs, flowers, or stars. You can also just use plain old colored index cards without a shape! 

  • Sorting

    For each of these learning targets, your little should sort the mixed starting pile of cars into two separate piles.

    • Uppercase vs. Lowercase Letters
    • Letters vs. Words vs. Numbers (any combination - pick two, or all three!)

  • Matching

    For this game, students should be pulling cars from the mixed pile to create matched pairs. 

    • Uppercase & Lowercase of the same letter
    • Numbers & Number Words - for example, one car would have "2" and another would have "two" that would get pulled as a pair
    • Numbers & Quantities - in this case, one car might have "2" and the other would have two squares/circles.

     If you're using the dry erase laminated version, you can also just have your learner draw the correct quantity on any number or number word car. Similarly, they can pull an uppercase letter card and write the lowercase letter on it, or vice versa!

  • Ordering

    As the name suggests, the students should be moving cards from the mixed starting pile to a particular order.

    • Number Order 1-10 or 1-20
    • Ordering Numbers from least to greatest - for this variation, skip around with the numbers you have on the cars (ex: 5, 8, 9, 13, 21, 27)
    • Ordering Numbers from biggest to smallest
    • Alphabet Order (for kinder kiddos, we recommend this as a "memorizing the alphabet" style game with letters only, though alphabetizing words could be a differentiation option for gifted advanced learners!)

  • Searching

    For this style of play, the adult facilitator should verbalize a stimulus, and the student should find the corresponding car from the mixed assortment.

    • Letter Sounds - facilitator says a sound, and the child finds the letter that makes that sound
    • Letter Names - parent says a letter name, and the child finds the car with that letter
    • Numbers - as above, the facilitator can say a number and have the child find that number. For numbers 1-10, the facilitator can also hold up some fingers and have the child search for the number that represents that quantity.
    • Sight Words - the student finds the car with the word spoken by the facilitator

Materials & Preparation 

  • Paper Clips - secure one to each car
  • Magnetic "rod" 
    • not feeling crafty? search for a telescoping magnet
    • craft-your-own: tie or securely tape some string around the magnet... if this feels a bit too dangly for your little's hand-eye coordination skills, or if they struggle with the fine motor skills to grasp the string, you can create a sturdier "rod" by leaving just a bit of string to dangle from the magnet and securing the rest to a capped marker or unsharpened pencil with more tape!
  • Card stock paper or index cards - regular paper or colored construction paper will also get the job done, but we recommend sturdier options for more long-term durability!
  • Car-shaped template - our listing on Teachers Pay Teachers includes a PDF with pre-made cars for numbers 1-20 as well as letters A-Z in both uppercase and lower case. It also includes an editable powerpoint to print additional blank cars or to type custom words. Of course, you can also draw your own shape or use a picture from Google Images as a stencil.
  • OPTIONAL: thermal laminator for ultimate durability & dry erase marker if you want to only print/make only a few cars and reuse them with different words -- this is ideal for learners who move through their sight words quickly!
  • Also optional: light colored pencils or crayons to let your learner color the cars before playing!